Applications of Distributed Ledger technologies in Robotics

Increasing convergence of virtual space and physical space driven by society 5.0 has propelled research in distributed ledgers to identify how trust in autonomous systems and robotics can be enabled through decentralised frameworks for decision making and consensus building. Industrial, multi-robot systems, embedded systems, and more have seen growth in applications using distributed ledgers. Although progressing, implementations are currently ad-hoc with middleware systems, such as ROS, not yet adopting a standard to permit easy integration of these technologies. Nor is the technology readiness level of distributed ledgers easily identifiable. This creates challenges for adoption and system integration

Mitigating Insider Threat Risks in Cyber-physical Manufacturing Systems

Cyber-Physical Manufacturing System (CPMS)—a next generation manufacturing system—seamlessly integrates digital and physical domains via the internet or computer networks. It will enable drastic improvements in production flexibility, capacity, and cost-efficiency. However, enlarged connectivity and accessibility from the integration can yield unintended security concerns. The major concern arises from cyber-physical attacks, which can cause damages to the physical domain while attacks originate in the digital domain. Especially, such attacks can be performed by insiders easily but in a more critical manner: Insider Threats. Insiders can be defined as anyone who is or has been affiliated with a system. Insiders have knowledge and access authentications of the system\u27s properties, therefore, can perform more serious attacks than outsiders. Furthermore, it is hard to detect or prevent insider threats in CPMS in a timely manner, since they can easily bypass or incapacitate general defensive mechanisms of the system by exploiting their physical access, security clearance, and knowledge of the system vulnerabilities. This thesis seeks to address the above issues by developing an insider threat tolerant CPMS, enhanced by a service-oriented blockchain augmentation and conducting experiments & analysis. The aim of the research is to identify insider threat vulnerabilities and improve the security of CPMS. Blockchain\u27s unique distributed system approach is adopted to mitigate the insider threat risks in CPMS. However, the blockchain limits the system performance due to the arbitrary block generation time and block occurrence frequency. The service-oriented blockchain augmentation is providing physical and digital entities with the blockchain communication protocol through a service layer. In this way, multiple entities are integrated by the service layer, which enables the services with less arbitrary delays while retaining their strong security from the blockchain. Also, multiple independent service applications in the service layer can ensure the flexibility and productivity of the CPMS. To study the effectiveness of the blockchain augmentation against insider threats, two example models of the proposed system have been developed: Layer Image Auditing System (LIAS) and Secure Programmable Logic Controller (SPLC). Also, four case studies are designed and presented based on the two models and evaluated by an Insider Attack Scenario Assessment Framework. The framework investigates the system\u27s security vulnerabilities and practically evaluates the insider attack scenarios. The research contributes to the understanding of insider threats and blockchain implementations in CPMS by addressing key issues that have been identified in the literature. The issues are addressed by EBIS (Establish, Build, Identify, Simulation) validation process with numerical experiments and the results, which are in turn used towards mitigating insider threat risks in CPMS

Estão os portugueses preparados para o futuro do turismo? Aplicação do modelo de aceitação tecnológica ao uso de robots em turismo

The tourism sector has been growing exponentially in Portugal over the last few years, becoming increasingly competitive. On the other hand, the use of machines, robots and artificial intelligence in this industry that is built by and for people, has also been increasing and diversifying. The objective of this investigation focuses on the study of variables that can affect the acceptance of robots by the Portuguese public. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is applied to understand the influence of a set of sociodemographic variables, travel behavior, motivation, and attitude towards technology in general in the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of using robots in tourism. The results obtained demonstrate that the Portuguese case is similar to that of other Western countries, with gender, age, travel group, motivation and attitude towards technology having a significant impact on the dependent variables.O setor do turismo em Portugal tem vindo a crescer exponencialmente nos últimos anos, tornando-se cada vez mais competitivo. Por outro lado, o uso de máquinas, robots e inteligência artificial nesta que é uma indústria construída por e para pessoas, tem também vindo a aumentar e a diversificar-se. O objetivo desta investigação centra-se no estudo das variáveis que podem afetar a aceitação dos robots por parte do público português. É aplicado o Modelo de Aceitação Tecnológica para perceber a influência de um conjunto de variáveis sociodemográficas, de comportamento em viagem, de motivação e de atitude face à tecnologia em geral na facilidade de utilização percebida e utilidade percebida do uso de robots em turismo. Os resultados obtidos permitem concluir que o caso português se assemelha ao de outros países ocidentais, tendo o género, idade, grupo de viagem, motivação e atitude face à tecnologia um impacto significativo nas variáveis dependentes.Mestrado em Gestão e Planeamento em Turism